532: The Untold Story of Carolina Grits, Florida Tomatoes, and the Georgia Peach with Shane Mitchell

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. That allowed me to go, well, why do I hate grits? And I started looking at what grits used to be historically, how corn turned into this disgusting, you know, dead snake skin, slimy stuff on the plate. And that allowed me to do a real interesting historical arc. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Over the last nine years, journalist Shane Mitchell has brave snakes, fire ants, floods, rallies, marches, protests, pageants, and near heatstroke to write the essays contained in her new collection of work published in The Bitter Southerner.

1:14The Crop Cycle, Stories with Deep Roots, has Shane traveling throughout the South, uncovering history, both past and modern, and reporting on major topics such as farm labor, race, gender, and the history of the Georgia peach. Shane has incredible writing chops and has contributed memorable stories for taste as well. We go over all of this in a terrific episode. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:49Shane Mitchell, welcome to This Is Taste. Great to see you in the studio. Hi, Matt. Thank you for having me here. Well, we've known each other for a very long time and, I mean, middle long time, I'll say. I wish I knew you longer because your career is so incredible. We could talk about your time at Savor on this episode, but we're not because that's another episode that we'll do in the future because I want you back. And I'd love to have you writing for Taste again. Oh, yes, please. We're here to talk about the crop cycle, Stories with Deep Roots, your new collection, which is a culmination of your work with The Bitter Southerner.

2:23And I am just blown away by the work, the detail, the reporting. But before we get into the book, I want to talk about something that really struck me from your bio. Quote, Shane challenges systematic Southern cultural bias without reservation, but also finds joy in the eccentric rituals of the region. Shane, what does that mean? Matt, you had to grow up with my family to know what a big gravitational pull the South is on me. I was born up here in Manhattan. And maybe that gives me a certain perspective that other people might not have on the South. But I am still haunted by ghosts whenever I walk down King Street in Charleston and they're whispering in my ear about why I'm wearing blue jeans in public.

3:20It's still those ghost whisper, the etiquette, the draw of the South. Wow. Yes. Yes. So that's part of what makes me want to write about the culture there in a way that other people don't. Yeah, I think you write in the collection and throughout, I would say there's a lot of you in these essays, which I love because that could be self-indulgent, but it's absolutely not. It's essential in linking the North and the South. How do you think about switching between third person and first person in your writing? Again, it's to just give a platform to the people who are speaking. I'm being observational rather than critical.

4:04And so it also, to give more context, let's understand my family has been in that region since the 1600s. And so I have a history there that I need to share with people, the good, the bad and the disgraceful. Yeah, well said, because you cover such heavy topics. You cover labor, you cover big ag, you cover slavery. I mean, it's the big topics of America. And when you wrote your first essay about grits and you published it in June 2015, did you think that this would be a series or a cycle? I love the word cycle. It's a tremendous word. And we think of it a lot with like modern art. But I think you clearly have landed on a cycle.

4:59Were you planning on a larger work? No, no, not at all. This evolved over time and the stories evolved over time. There are a few leitmotifs throughout, and those seem to make their way up to the surface as I started to write them. Each one of the stories, however, there's a clear linking with the narrative. I always start out each story with a personal anecdote about some member of my family and how each of those crops is related to something that we experience personally. And then draw back to telling a bigger narrative about what the crop is about, why it's important, who made it important, who was ignored, who wasn't acknowledged.

5:58So it gives you a deeper understanding of each crop. When we finally started talking about putting this all together in a collection, it was fairly recent. But in the back of everybody's mind, it was like this could be going in that direction. Tell us a little bit about Bitter Southerner. I'd like to just zoom out a little bit and just get into the publication. And we've had Kyle, one of the founders on the show, and I'll link to that episode in the show notes. It is an independent publication. It is done with so much heart. And I am the biggest fan of the work that is put into the publication.

6:39I first started noticing Bitter Southerner very early on when they started publishing online. And someone mentioned one of their stories about mariachis in Atlanta. And I was like, what? There's mariachis in Atlanta? I had no idea. and I read the story and it was fabulous. It gave you a real sense of craft and art that was experienced in Atlanta in a way I didn't know about. So I was very excited about that and I just basically liked it. Just on Twitter, you hit the heart. Hit the heart. Yeah, which, you know, missed the heart. Yeah, we do. We miss old Twitter. Yeah, so, but that sort of started it.

7:33And Kyle reached out to me and asked if I'd consider writing something. And we discussed different topics. But I had noticed they really didn't have any food writing early on. And, you know, I can write on many topics, obviously. But I said, you know, you're missing an opportunity if you're not writing about food in the South. And the editor at the time was saying, well, what would you want to write about? And I said, well, let's write about grits. And the comeback was, well, you know, grits, it's been written about. Everyone knows about grits. You know, why would you want to write about grits?

8:16And I said, you don't understand. I hate grits. And that was all that was needed. It was like, go. Go. But man, and wow, you really, you did more than just noodle on your hatred of grits. It could have been a first-person humorous essay. But in your writing about grits, you do a beautiful weave. You bring in deep family history, touching on food industrialization and tap into the deep history of the southern foodways. You know, these are really tricky needles to thread. And Shane, you do it so well. So about the grits, you know, many of us listening may have only experienced grits through like Bob Evans and Waffle House.

9:04Is that was that why you hated it? Was it was it I mean, I know you had a family history with it, but, you know, there's a lot of bad versions of grits. So what did what did you take away from this remit from Bitter Southerner to write about grits? And what did you end up finding out? Okay, so let me just say, if your listeners' only experience is diner chain grits, they haven't lived yet. Yeah, yeah, absolutely true. For me growing up, it was a touchstone for my parents living up north to the food that they grew up with, and specifically my mom, who was the one who was making the grits. But because she had five kids, she was in a rush a lot.

9:52So we had a lot of instant grits. And instant grits is probably the most disgusting food you can ever put in your mouth. And if you're like a stubborn child like I was and you sat at the table too long and they got cold, it could get so slimy and nasty on the bottom. You just – I had epic battles with my mother. And I would wind up sitting at the breakfast table until noon. She was one of those parents. Yes. Okay. You will finish your plate. But that allowed me to go, well, why do I hate grits? And I started looking at what grits used to be historically, how corn, which is a new world product, a crop, turned into this disgusting, you know, dead snake skin, slimy stuff on the plate.

10:47And that allowed me to do a real interesting historical arc. Yeah, I mean, the arc talks about, I would say it goes back 200 years, right? You're going into deep history. And in general, with grits, as a home cook, how do we stay away from those slimy, I love snakeskin? I mean, like, wow, talk about a buzzkill for a food podcast to hear that word snakeskin. But how do you avoid that? Well, it's all about buying grits from the right people. And especially now, what part of the story addressed was the new grits revolution that's happened. And actually, I should technically say the new corn revolution, the revival of heirloom varieties, the recovery of corn, corn varieties that had been dormant for decades, if not more than a century, and that were stored in vaults and stored in jars in people's refrigerators on porches.

11:55And it was all about looking at how seed keepers and seed savers have been able to bring these delicious corn varieties back into our pantry. So there's that aspect. And then there's this revival of small batch milling that's gone on. And that has really taken off. So there's so many millers. The one I featured in the corn story is Greg Johnsman of March Hen Mill. So Greg was very involved with reviving Jimmy Red, which is such an amazing corn. And it's the one grits I ate that I didn't want to throw up after eating it. Is that a brand we can seek out in stores? How do we buy it? Yes, you can.

12:50So it depends. In the South, you could go to a lot of stores, a lot of grocery stores and find it. Or you can buy it online. They do mail order. Jimmy Redd. Jimmy Redd. Okay. So on to rice. You dig into the iconic Uncle Ben, and listeners may be familiar with the popular Mars-owned brand of rice. How did Uncle Ben allow you to dig into the history and resurrection of Carolina gold rice? Well, that story, sort of the underlying theme of that story is about marketing. Yes. So for context, at one time, Carolina Gold was a commercial variety. It's not the precious heirloom, you know,$10 a bag rice that it is now.

13:36Absolutely delicious, too. Oh, yes. Incredible rice. Yes. And J.J. Johnson has been on the show talking about Carolina Gold in detail. Right. But it's more of a it's more of a it's a short grain rice. It's more like a risotto. Yeah. You would not put chicken gravy on it, you know. But but the issue with Ben's, which is now called Ben's Original. Let's be clear that the Mars company has evolved since I think it was 2020 that they changed the name finally and took the gentleman who was a waiter, who was their mascot. Yeah, you had written about the iconic Uncle Ben character that was seen on the rice or was actually was a real person in Chicago and was paid$500 to sit for a portrait.

14:31Very interesting. Yes. Yes. So that that image, similarly to, say, Aunt Jemima or the chef from Cream of Wheat, those were all those were all very sort of racially charged images. of people who you would think might be cooking your food. And so that led to sort of my ability to tie the two together because let's remember who grew the Carolina gold originally in specifically South Carolina and who was actually in the field planting it versus who was profiting from it. So that allowed me to write a very big narrative. But also I wanted to be very specific as far as acknowledging my family's aspect in that narrative because my family grew rice.

15:30Oh, wow. Really? And you write about that, of course. And what personal history did you place into this work? The context that I wanted to create was who's growing it now. Got it. And at the time, it was one of my younger cousins who was in her 20s. She had studied with people like Joel Salatin, and she had worked on a number of different sort of organic projects and farming projects. This was a way to recover and restore old rice fields on the Cumbie River and bring them back into use because they were just sitting there with a bunch of alligators floating around in the canals. So this was a project that the family wanted to try.

16:31And she grew out the first crops. And it was amazing. the flavor profile of the rice was extraordinary. And rice is a tricky one because rice evolves in flavor. You can lose the flavor of the rice over the genetic time. So tasting that particular rice again was so amazing for everyone in my family to see it back. Your book is The Crop Cycle, Stories with Deep Roots. And please, listener, you should pick this up and have it by your bedside. And you can just dip into these stories that tackle Southern foodways. And I want to talk about the story from Immokalee, Florida. You write about tomato farm workers and you really, you focus in on labor organization down there.

17:25And I just want to broadly get a sense about what did you learn about the tomatoes that we eat? in our country, 12 months a year, and the folks who are harvesting them? Okay. So this was my come-to-Jesus moment, really, is going to Immokalee and connecting with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which is a nonprofit advocacy group that works towards fair labor, not just in the tomato harvesting sector, but all sectors that require seasonal labor. Immokalee is where tomatoes start growing. Our first tomatoes of the year come from Immokalee, Florida. But tomato harvest moves north through the season.

18:26And these are workers who migrate with the harvest. So I met harvesters in Immokalee who were picking tomatoes there and then traveled as the season progressed all the way Carolina with them, met them again up there to see how they were harvesting in the fields. And what's important to know is most off-season tomatoes that we buy in the supermarket are grown by big corporations that are agriculturally, industrially, that's the ag industrial complex. So these tomatoes have the flavor of cardboard for the most part. They're as hard as a snow globe. These are not what you imagine when you listen to the song Homegrown Tomatoes.

19:21Right. But I had a worker who was one of the coalition's hunger strikers talk to me about what it was like to pick those little grape tomatoes in the field and how grueling it is and how difficult it is to gather enough of those grape tomatoes to make enough money per day for harvest. And so that made me realize that I really didn't know where tomatoes were coming from. I didn't understand anything at the time about what those school buses that are painted white do when they get to these fields. I didn't know that there were small indications of you're welcome here, little signs that would be put out in labor camps to welcome workers.

20:18It was a whole culture that is completely invisible to most people. Shane, what were the conditions like for these workers? What types of housing did they have? And what was the food like that the workers were eating? Because I know you dug into this in this essay a little bit. Yes. So a lot of them live in camps. A lot of them also live in houses that are rented by the producers. And some of them are squalid. It's just disgraceful what some of the workers have to deal with. This wasn't just with tomatoes either. You know, I saw labor camps when I started investigating Vidalia onions as well. And so the conditions are pretty rough, you know, 5 to 10 to 12 people to a mobile home, plus their children.

21:21The food is what they can afford. It depends. A lot of people have to buy food wherever they can go because if they show up in a bigger public market, they might find themselves in jeopardy. So there's lots of little bodegas right off the fields where they can buy food. But I have to say one of the women who I met, she taught me how to make the most amazing mole. and it was so heartwarming and it's a mole that she knows specifically because she's from Guanajuato and it's a mole from Guanajuato and she gifted me this recipe and I still make it. I still make it just the way she taught me. So tell me a little bit about where these folks are coming from and their status.

22:19You hint at this when you just said when you couldn't go to a grocery store because they're maybe in jeopardy. Where are they coming from? Well, okay. So there's a bigger conversation to have around two words. One is illegal and the other is undocumented. These are workers who are either seasonal H-2A workers with a visa or they are undocumented. And they came here specifically to be able to have a better life. They send money home. They buy families houses and clothes and food. I had one worker tell me that he was making$8 a day at home. So the$11 an hour here changed his whole family's life.

23:16And for me, that's the most important aspect of that. But you have to remember that the guest worker program is very problematic and headed into what we're looking at in the next couple of years. It's going to be even a bigger issue to discuss. Yeah. And Shane, I want to move on to talk about more of the essays, but I think you nailed it with the next four years being a pivotal time for these workers that you visited with and the rhetoric versus the real talk. Because, I mean, we can't as a culture survive without these types of workers. No. No. Who's going to pick your tomatoes? Who's going to pick your tomatoes?

24:02This is a question we should always ask ourselves when reading the news each day. I want to take a break from the crop cycle and ask you about your 2016 book, Far Afield, Rare Food Encounters Around the World. And we published it here at Crown. And really, Shane, what a terrific book. And I just could not have you on the mic without asking you about this deeply reported work that I just love. Tell us a bit about it. Okay, so Far Afield, really what that is, is that book emerged from years of field work and reporting narratives from people who are keeping some of our oldest food traditions going.

24:44Icelandic sheep herders, Hawaiian taro farmers, Peruvian potato farmers, Uruguayan gauchos. These are all people who are way out in the world and keeping these stories alive and sharing that kind of food that they've always had. But I found through assignments, being able to sort of go off the grid to get to spend time with a lot of people who are doing that. So it took a lot of convincing. And I'm so grateful to Aaron. Aaron Winner, yeah. Yes, who finally got it. I showed some images around. And, you know, I must credit James Fisher, the photographer at the time who shot the whole book. I knew I had to show the hardest story to get them to accept everything else.

25:50Because if somebody in publishing flinched at the hardest story, I wasn't going to give it to them. And that was about young Maasai warriors slaughtering a sheep. And it's pretty graphic. It's pretty graphic. But it's also really beautiful. Yeah. And did you and James travel together for this work? So, I mean, it's really just in brief. It's a book that is the book that a lot of journalists want to write but can never write because it takes so much effort. And traveling the world with a documentary-style photographer and really just getting in really close to culture. And how long did it take to write the book?

26:25It took about nine years, you know, on and off. The last chapter that was reported, I think almost the last chapter, was actually in the jungle in Calais. So I was actually looking at someone else who was far from home. He was a refugee from Sudan. Wow. And he had wound up in this camp and was trying to get to claim asylum in England. And he was stuck there. And in some of the most horrific conditions I've ever experienced. You know, I had PTSD for a long time after I reported that story. Just watching, there was a 12-year-old boy from Kabul who had walked from Afghanistan and made it to France.

27:22And I just was like, how does that happen? How does a kid like that walk all the way across continents to get to this place? And I was basically told by people who translated for me, his parents knew he would die if he didn't go. So for me, that was sort of, and that actually was the story that won my first James Beard. The piece that was later in the book, I see. I mean, this is like core Savore. I mean, this type of ethic and you were on staff there and worked there for and continue to work at Savore. That wasn't for Savore though. Oh, okay. What was that for? It was actually for Roads and Kingdoms.

28:04Oh, Roads and Kingdoms. All right. Well, we're talking about some really great media here. And what's up with Savoir right now? I can't let that pass. You're working with this great team. Still there after all these years. And I am so excited because Cat Craddock has just brought Savoir roaring back. I know. In all its beauty, the fall issue is stunning. It really is. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. If you're one of those last-minute shoppers, you might know the feeling. Ideas are running low and the clock is ticking. Here's a fun idea. Aura Frames. Aura Frames is the solution with a gift that feels personal, a little curated, and sent with love.

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29:26That is pretty cool. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get$35 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames, named number one by Wirecutter, by using promo code TASTE at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames dot com, promo code TASTE. The deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request?

30:08A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey link in our show notes. Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up. Support independent media, pick a bitter southerner and, of course, the crop cycle. Okay, Shane, we ask this question often at the end of the show and regular listeners will know that okra comes up about 30 % of the time.

30:47We'll get to that question for you, by the way. But let me ask you, you know, in your reporting on okra, you know, what should we know about okra and its multiple personalities? Okay. Well, let's understand where okra comes from, first of all. Some of the crops in this story were New World crops. Corn, tomatoes, peanuts. But okra comes from away. And you have to understand how okra got here to know why it's so important. Okra is a seed that was carried here because of the Middle Passage. It was brought by people who were kidnapped from the west coast of Africa and sold into slavery. There's an oral history of how these seeds were transported.

31:41and not just okra, but like Benny, sesame, appears in the same way, carried by someone who is torn from their homeland and with only a few grains or a handful of seeds gathered and hidden during the journey. And honestly, this is one of the most powerful and compelling stories in food history in America is what those seeds represented to the people who brought them, and what a way of resisting such a terrible fate. That's the relevance of okra. Remember, though, that okra is mucilaginous. It's gilly. So it binds things. So because of okra, we have gumbo. and gumbo of course is one of the most important dishes it's so relevant to some art yeah absolutely yeah so that's that's what okra means i love that you talk about cooking with okra because i think you know some some folks are only roasting it and and or eating it you know on its own but you know i was watching the recent chef's table with kwami and watch and watching him cook with okra and using it as a binder and seeing him use it in a fully composed dish.

33:10And it really changes your perspective about how this crop is versatile. When you think about okra and eating it, how do you eat it yourself? Dunked in cornmeal and fried. I mean, definitely fry that thing. It's good. It's good. It's good. Yeah. But I will say we should remember that the South is not a dichotomy anymore. There are so many cultures in the South that have introduced their own ways of cooking okra. There's everyone from the subcontinent who has introduced, you know, like bindi masala. Yeah. And there's the Chinese way of cooking okra. There's the Hmong version of cooking okra. So it is important to know that there are so many tasty ways.

34:06Absolutely well said. Duane Allman famously said, every time I'm in Georgia, I eat a peach for peace. So what does that mean? And how did this quote kind of get you into this beautiful essay about Georgia peaches? Okay. So first of all, my husband is a major fan of the Allman Brothers. And I've been to so many residencies at the Beacon Theater. You know, I got to see Warren Haynes walk onto the stage for the first time to play with Dickie Betts and Greg Allman. And little did I know, I mean, I was just buying a ticket to go see a band. But it's important to know what Duane was actually saying when he said, I eat a peach for peace, because that was in an interview.